Sporting News - History

History

TSN was founded by Alfred H. Spink, a director of the St. Louis Browns and former writer for the Missouri Republican daily newspaper. Each number was 17 by 22 inches, eight pages, price five cents (Cooper 1996). The Browns were champions of the American Association, one of two major leagues in baseball, with a claim to the championship of the United States or the world based on the disputed 1885 World Series contest with regional rival Chicago, and the undisputed 1886 winner. Meanwhile the sporting weeklies Clipper and Sporting Life were based in New York and Philadelphia. By World War I, TSN would be the only national baseball newspaper. Al Spink had long turned it over to his brother, first hiring Charles as business manager, then selling his stock, and finally departing from writing and editorial work in 1899 (Cooper 1996).

Throughout much of the 20th century TSN was decidedly non-glamorous, consisting of black-and-white newsprint with staid graphics. However it was the only vehicle for serious sports fans to follow teams from around the nation. For example, each week it printed a box score and blurb for every baseball game played in the major leagues and numerous minor leagues. Similarly, every issue had a report on each major league baseball team, usually written by a local newspaper's beat writer for that team. Franklin Gritts, the Cherokee artist, served as TSN's art director from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s.

Other publications of the Sporting News included the annual Baseball Register, a compilation of lifetime statistics of active major league players. Its subtitle from the 40s through the mid 60s was The Game's Four Hundred.

The Spink family sold TSN to Times Mirror in the mid-1980s. Also around this time the company began publishing annual previews for professional and college football, professional and college basketball, baseball, and hockey.

With the advent of national sports media in the 1980s such as USA Today and ESPN, and of comprehensive web sites run by the major sports leagues in the 1990s, TSN lost this unique role. Consequently, it evolved into more of a conventional, glossy sports magazine in both appearance and contents. Box scores disappeared from its pages in the late 1980s, but were still made available to subscribers in a separate publication for an undetermined period of time afterwards. The online SN Today revived the tradition of publishing boxscores in its virtual pages.

In 2001, the company acquired the One on One Sports radio network, renaming it Sporting News Radio. The same year, it was purchased by Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc.

In September 2006, Advance Publications bought TSN and its online division and folded it into American City Business Journals. With the change in ownership, the company ceased most of its book publishing efforts. The 2006 Baseball Guide, a TSN annual in one form or another since the 1920s, was its last. The 2007 Baseball Register, an annual since the early 1940s, was its last. The 2007 Baseball Record Book was only available online, as a download. None of these guides were published in 2008.

In 2011, Sporting News appointed Garry D. Howard as editor-in-chief of Sporting News magazine, Sporting News Today and its website, Sporting News Feed. Howard came to Sporting News from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he was sports editor. Howard also was president of the Associated Press Sports Editors. Also as part of its reorganization in 2011, Benson Taylor was named managing editor of SN magazine and Paul Kasko was named managing editor of SN Today and SN Feed. In late 2011 Sporting News ceased its print edition after 125 years. However, its Fantasy Football and Fantasy Baseball yearbooks remained in publication.